Leader in the early U.S. labor movement The founder of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), Samuel Gompers changed the direction of the labor movement by abandoning efforts to organize employees across industries in favor of a craftbased unionism that focused only on skilled, white, male workers. While his policy of “business unionism” helped the labor movement grow, his reluctance to participate in the political process weakened the impact of organized labor in the first decades of the twentieth century.Samuel Gompers in 1908.Bettmann/Corbis; used with permission. [Source: Encyclopedia of Leadership; Gompers, Samuel (1850–1924)]
Samuel Gompers
people
key people in leadership
labor/socialism/communism/social class